This is Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vedantam.

Every week we look at human behavior through the lens of social science research.

Today we turn our attention to history and the untold stories that so often lie beneath it.

When I see the statues and the memorials to sims, what I see is what's not shown.

We'll also look at how, as William Faulkner might say, the past is never dead.

It's not even past.

Black kids with fractures go into an emergency room and do not get the same level of anesthesia as white kids.

We'll also hear from poet Bettina Judd on who gets credit for medical advances and who doesn't.

Simms, invents the speckum. I invent the wind sing.

If you must of it, the looking away.

There is a statue in South Carolina honoring a man who is known as the father of modern gynecology.

The inscription on the statue reads,

the first surgeon of the ages in ministry to women treating a like,

impress and slave.

J. Marion Sims was a physician who was born in South Carolina in 1813.

This is Vanessa Northington Gamble.

She's a physician and medical historian at the George Washington University.

We asked her to come in to tell us the story of J. Marion Sims, who is memorialized in statues not only in South Carolina,

but also in Montgomery, Alabama and Central Park in New York City.

He started a clinic in Montgomery, Alabama and at the time, in order to survive financially,

he also was a plantation physician, where he took care of the enslaved one plantations.

This is where the story of Sims becomes complicated.

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